


the inevitable

by quietmoon



Series: megop week 2020 [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Bigotry & Prejudice, Flirting, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Reminiscing, Social Issues, Worldbuilding, all megatron does is sulk, and all soundwave does is enable him, friendship: achieved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22154464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietmoon/pseuds/quietmoon
Summary: Megatronus had a good day, once. Megatron remembers it distantly.
Relationships: Megatron & Soundwave, Megatron/Optimus Prime, Megatron/Orion Pax
Series: megop week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824118
Comments: 18
Kudos: 113
Collections: MegOP Week 2020





	the inevitable

**Author's Note:**

> [prompt](https://megop.tumblr.com/post/188937997837/the-results-have-been-calculated-megop-week-will): domestic

Megatronus fiddles with the small chip. It is laughably small between his fingers, a speck of dust in the face of a mountain. He dips a claw into the port groove, careful to keep the sharp tip from causing damage, and wonders at the compact form.

One tiny chip with the entire world inside it.

“Well?” the mech behind the counter repeats rudely. Their Iacon-blue optics appraise his features and seem to find the results lacking. “You’ve got what you came for, mech. Move along.”

Megatronus doesn’t spare them another glance, gaze transfixed on the currency chip. Weaving through the crowd of workers waiting to collect their own paychecks, he returns to the tall entrance arch. The crowds part to make way for his path, many of the mechs looking up at him with recognition in their expressions. But of course, who in Kaon wouldn’t know of Megatronus? He has certainly made quite a name for himself.

He had to stand in the queues for almost three joors, heads above the vast majority of other mechs all waiting to be paid what they were owed. A few pushed and shoved at one another, eager to collect their wages for the deca-cycle and return to wherever they came from. Which, judging by the look of them, are no doubt the hovels and slums that made up the body of Kaon’s home districts. The governmental bodies don’t call them the residential districts — that name is reserved for those who can afford to live outside the squalor — but that’s what they _really_ are. The true beating heart of his home city-state.

He’ll do better, with this new position. That will be just one drop of the transformational deluge he intends to bring about.

No mech dared to share the rough treatment with him, no matter how crowded the waiting room became. They know better. They know of him. The grime on their chassis, the hungry look in their optics, the crackling of strained voice boxes; all are enough to tell him that these mechs are not the type to find their entertainment in the Iaconian imports. They aren’t the sort who can afford pricey holodisks and compressed vidi-data files filtered with pristine blue-opticed mechs playing out some inane drama the pleasure of an alien audience.

No, these are all Megatronus’ sort. They find their thrills in the Pits. There likely isn’t one worker in this room who has not cheered his name before.

It is a sobering thought. He has a responsibility to each one of these mechs to deliver on his promises, now that he is finally in a position to do so — finally has his foot in the door, at least, the first step of many, many more.

Megatronus curls his claws around the tiny chip and subspaces it. He almost doesn’t feel the weight leave his palm, but his spark twists victoriously in the core of his chassis, the thrum of it violent through his chamber.

` _Megatronus?_ `

Orion’s familiar cadence calls gently from his comm line, and he must grit his dentae to keep at bay the grin threatening to peek through. He cannot show that here, not in front of the throng. No, he knows many of the mechs gathered know the significance of his presence here, now, and he has to maintain a sombre exterior. It is half a show, this day. He surreptitiously hastens his pace, stepping with careful grace despite his size through the crowd of low-caste mechs.

Only once he’s outside on the smoke-fogged street does Megatronus allow himself to exhale the vent he was holding in.

` _Did it go all right?_ `

Orion’s comm still stands out to his system, no matter the vorns they’ve shared contact. Data from an Iaconian sounds clearer, somehow cleaner, like a crystal-clear solvent pool. It swims through his processor still like a stream. That it is _Orion’s_ data, his Orion Pax, that dearest of mechs… Megatronus musn’t give into these sorts of thoughts. By the Pits, the coding of his processor begins to sound positively glitched whenever that data clerk is concerned.

Again, a soft ping, this time with an accompanying glyph to signal subtle urgency. `_They did not give you trouble, I pray?_`

` _Peace, loved one,_` Megatronus returns. Immediately, Orion replies with a data-burst of `_annoyed_` and `_relieved_` and `_shy_` and `_elated_` all at once. Megatronus’ tiny grin grows for an instant before he composes his expression and begins to make his way through the street back to the Pits of Kaon.

` _You delayed your response,_` Orion chides.

` _And your voice is all the sweeter for it._ `

Prior to meeting Pax, comms were used almost entirely for utility as far as he was concerned. With the one exception of the ever-private Soundwave, with whom Megatronus enjoyed — and continues to enjoy — frequent enthused conversations about anything and everything within the privacy afforded by encrypted radio waves, he used his comm system only when demanded by some Guildmaster. Anyone else he wished to speak with, he would do so out loud and face to face. It has only ever been with that unassuming archivist, that most precious of mechs, that conversation has elicited such a zeal within him that Megatronus finds himself greedy for more time, more attention, more of everything Pax will give him. And that the mech flirts _back_ only serves to multiply Megatronus’ delight further.

` _Don’t tease me._` Orion sounds flustered. Megatronus wishes with sudden severity that the other were here right now, walking alongside him through the grimy undercity. Oh, the expression he might wear, the hunch his shoulders might take on— Megatronus could then so easily take Orion’s servo in his own and link their fingers, holding onto him through the tide of Kaon’s underbelly. Orion’s servo would be dwarfed in Megatronus’, and there in the privacy of his own fist he might stroke ever so softly against the liquid-smooth metal of the back of Orion’s servo, might drink in the quiet shiver it would certainly draw from the slight frame…

He bundles up the thoughts into a data-burst of his own and shoots it back to Orion. Although he doesn’t have to — surely not, when his thoughts speak so shamelessly for him — he cannot resist to accompany it with a simple message. `_You are missed, Pax. Dearly._`

Megatronus passes stalls and tiny stacked hab-suites the size of a room, all inlaid into the walls of the crowded dirty street. Mechs of all sizes and colours pass him by, few giving him more than a second glance. Warframes, miners, commute shuttles — Kaon holds them all.

Nearly a klik passes before Orion’s answer comes.` _You are incorrigible, gladiator._ `Megatronus swears he can taste the words on his own tongue, that endearing coyness with which Orion flirts. Half hidden, half eager, sweeter than the most extortionate engex.

` _You will visit me today, Pax. Immediately. I must have you before the cycle’s end._` Even to his own processor, the words sound sudden and belligerent, but Orion only sends back `_amusement_`. Iacon is too far away, _far_ too far.

` _Your errand — you still have not told me how it went. I trust well? You seem to be in a good mood._ `

The words ring true. He can feel it in the lightness of his step, that insignificant weight of the chip’s ghost still pressed against his palm, even in the echoes of all those mechs staring at him in the wage hall, watching with wide eyes as the newly-free gladiator collected his first earnings as a free mech.

` _This cycle has been nothing but delight,_` Megatronus comms back, turning into an alleyway to climb the couple hundred steps that would lead him to the overcity. From there, he’ll cross Kaon’s eastern plaza and descend the steep steps that lead deeper than the undercity, right down to the Pits.

` _Oh?_` A data-burst of `_surprised_` and `_pleased_` accompanies.

` _It is as I say, Pax. I walk free. Every step I take is closer to you. And I have your voice in my spark._` He begins to crest the head of the stairs, and the light of Cybertron’s sky shines down, too bright for his red dark-adjusted optics. He squints out of habit, ducking his helm as he continues to ascend. `_It is the first day of my new life, Orion. I see it now, stretched before me: an endless path leading me only higher. Change is inevitable, and this — today — is the first step. I can taste it in the air._` He walks a few steps in silence, before finishing the message. `_Yes, loved one. I am in a good mood indeed._`

Orion takes a while to reply, long enough for Megatronus to have risen above the Kaonian undercity, but when he does it is as a recording, not a direct comm. Megatronus can hear the emotion in Orion’s voice even as he whispers, likely into the frequency receiver in his wrist.

“I’m so happy for you, dearest. I’m so happy you can walk the path you’re meant to.”

The quality is much poorer than that of a direct comm, but somehow even more intimate. He can hear shuffling in the background as clerks go about their work in the Hall of Records, the beeping and clacking of their datapads, the keys clicking at countless work stations. He can picture it so clearly in his mind’s eye, Orion ducking down under his desk in the pretence of picking up a fallen datapad, and whispering behind his servos, those shining blue optics narrowed and gentle as he speaks to his gladiator a city-state away. Megatronus' engine revs against his will, far too loud in the echoey tunnel of the stairwell subway.

` _I shall have you, dearest! Visit me tonight, Orion, you must, you absolutely must—_` Megatronus begins to comm, making no attempt to hold back, when he is pulled out of his thoughts by a jarring interruption. Held across the thick metal of his chest, the anxiously familiar shape of an enforcer’s shock-baton halts his advance.

Megatronus glances down to find a border control officer squinting up at him. Recognition lights in her optics — red, like his own — and her arm drops. The expression turns apologetic before a red visor slips down to cover her optics. “Verification,” she says, in a voice that is steely and detached.

He wonders as he pulls up his identification documentation from subspace, with a sudden intensity that takes himself aback, whether Kaonian officers’ voice boxes are modified. He has yet to meet one who speaks with expression. It’s a worrying thought. He notes it in a long term cache to ask Soundwave later — if anyone can find out, even if it is something the state does not want the common folk to know, it’s that enigmatic mech.

He hands her his card. “Megatronus.”

She glances from the holo-picture on the ID to him.

“I was a gladiator in the Pits until recently,” he elaborates quickly. “My transfer to the city-state governmental precinct was completed last deca-cycle.”

“Purpose of currrent ascension?”

“I needed to collect my wages from the north-west undercity’s governmental office. There is no such institution in the Pits.” He is careful to let none of his derision slip through into his tone.

“Permission?”

` _Alpha Trion caught me,_` Orion comms him suddenly, tone petulant. `_You encourage bad habits in me, sweetspark._` Megatronus coughs against the sudden laugh that fights to escape his mouth. The officer’s expression doesn’t change, and he clears his throat. “Pardon me. The Kaonian public office authorised my free travel upon transfer from the Gladiatorial Guild.”

“Authority?”

Oh, this _farce._ He is so used to it, and yet, the frustration is impossible to quell. The suspicious questions don’t even phase him anymore, not as they raised his hackles vorns ago, but the useless time-wasting monotony of it all is… unwelcome, to say the least. “As I said, the Kaonian public office oversee my contract. My paycheck was signed off by one of the secretaries. I can supply contact information if it is needed.”

It continues for another few kliks, with Megatronus continuously having to drag his focus away from the delicious embarrassment in Orion’s most recent message back to the officer in front of him. His claws twitch at his sides with the eagerness to reply to Orion, but he must focus. To get tangled with some nonsense at one of Kaon’s countless security check-up offices would certainly put a dampener on any glowing mood he might have. And it would also completely erase any chance of Orion possibly visiting at the cycle’s end.

Eventually, she allows him the entry to the surface he needs to return to his hab-suite — still situated in the Pits for now — and he starts climbing the last few stairs up.

But as he walks away, he hears, in that same modulated tone, a quiet, “Freedom: achieved. Congratulations: offered.”

Megatronus’ whips around. Her red visor gazes at him steadily. His back straightens, and he nods down at her. “Thank you.” She doesn’t respond, but her gaze is still locked with his, and Megatronus knows suddenly that he must say something more. “Freedom,” the words spill forth without thinking, “is the right of all sentient beings.”

He can’t say anything more. He might contradict some core programming she’s been hijacked with; they might not be as alone as he thinks; he might even be misreading her entirely and to say more would be dangerous.

But what he’s said, alone, should be enough. If she would understand, then she will.

The visor seems to brighten. The officer raises an arm, and Megatronus tenses instinctively, battle systems primed from deca-vorns in the Pits, from a lifetime of fighting for his life. But her grip does not stray to her weapon. Instead, she salutes him.

It’s over before he can cycle his optics. She turns and stares back down the long road of steps Megatronus just climbed, back to him.

He swallows roughly, and turns to squint out across the surface. The streets here are much wider, with more colour and a jovial air to the street-side merchants. It’s a welcoming sight to a stranger — but Megatronus knows how deceiving looks can be. Loitering would be ill-advised, especially for him, especially now.

Megatronus begins to walk towards the entrance for the Pits. In his mind’s eye, he sees the officer, a veritable pawn of the state, saluting him in secret. It loops over and over in his processor. It’s as if he can’t look away.

He swears he can feel it, brushing against his own spark: Orion’s curiosity and expectation as he awaits an answer to his message. But of course, Megatronus can feel no such thing. Not in reality. It would be impossible. They are not sparkbonded. They are not conjunxed. Any taste of the archivist he carries in his spark is only what he has put there himself.

Megatronus is, however, a free mech now. He has a position at Kaon’s governmental precinct — a low-down job, a laughable position, but a _position_ nonetheless. He has his foot in the door to bring about the change he has only so far been able to shout at the skies about. He can provide a home now, he can provide money, provide safety… He has something he can finally offer a conjunx endura, something of substance. Something to offer his love beyond his own hardened spark.

Would Orion accept him? Would Orion wish for such a bond, too?

` _Not bad habits, my Orion,_` he composes for his data clerk, thinking of a warm frame in his arms, of the hopeful glint in the officer's visor. `_I only encourage the inevitable._`

* * *

In the wake of the death of Megatronus, a furious voice cries out, “What have you done?”

Around him wafts acrid smoke as metal, caked in an age of pollution and corruption, burns. Familiar blue eyes pierce through it. They find him through the fire and smoke. “Megatronus, what have you done!?”

Megatron says what he must. “The inevitable, Orion! This is the only way, don’t you see?”

But the mech only backs away from him _._ “No,” laments a voice, laden with static, “no, _no—_ ”

* * *

Megatron shakes his head to silence the thoughts. The quiet of the Nemesis is a stark contrast to the roaring of his processor a moment ago.

“Soundwave,” he barks out, “send me schematics and statuses.”

Within a nano-klik, he’s being commed the details. Expertly compressed data filters through his strategic subcircuits of the Nemesis’ routine operations. Megatron has the entire ship and its workings ingrained into his processor at this point, but it’s a sort of comfort to run diagnostics on the warship regardless. It’s grounding.

Only he and Soundwave operate the flight deck at this time. Starscream is heading a strategy training session for some of the Vehicons and having, Megatron is confident, a grand old time of it. He loves the spotlight far too much, that pain-in-the-aft seeker. At least he’s good at what he does. Shockwave is enjoying his free time in his laboratory ( _or whatever equivalent to enjoyment that mech is capable of by now,_ Megatron corrects himself grimly). Knock-Out and Breakdown— Ah, he’d rather not think about what they’re up to. What his officers wish to do with their time is their business, as long as they excel in their posts. He shan’t punish himself with the ordeal of considering any more than he needs to.

The Nemesis bridge is a peaceful place nowadays. How disappointing for a warship, indeed, but the quiet is welcome now and again. With the ship in near stasis with how little is demanded of it lately, the flying is easy, and Soundwave hardly needs to focus. Nevertheless, his faceplate does not stray from the screen in front of him as his long fingers lazily click away.

To the undiscerning eye, the Communications and Surveillance Chief looks at ease. To Megatron, he looks bored out of his processor.

Megatron turns back to the expanse of transparasteel that forms the window-face of the ship, and sighs. “Likewise,” he mutters, more to himself than his friend. Soundwave doesn’t respond. Not that he expected him to.

Servos crossed behind him, Megatron surveys the expanse of black space with a detached expression. A few breems pass that way — perhaps even a joor — and the view doesn’t change. Stars far in the distance drift by sluggishly as the Nemesis flies on.

Megatron doesn’t think before he does it. One moment he’s looking out the window, the next he’s peering down into his palm, having removed a tiny unassuming chip from his subspace.

It looks like it belongs to a different world. Different time, certainly, but in his servo it looks foreign enough to bring about a deep pang of unease. He remembers suddenly his thoughts when he first held this currency chip — a speck of dust in the face of a mountain. _Well,_ he thinks, lips curling as he holds it between two sharp claws, _some things certainly don’t change._

Orion had acquiesced to his request, that day. He had visited Megatronus in his dark Pit-grime of a hab-suite in the late evening, laughing as he walked through the entrance about how demanding Megatronus could be. He’d reminded him, with a false air of exasperation, that it was not easy for him to enter the Pits so often, even if he had clearance for regular unannounced visitation to the Kaonian city-state courtesy of Alpha Trion.

Megatron can almost hear his conjunx’s voice in the far distance, like a fleeting breeze against his audials.

He glances down at the currency chip. So useless now, with nothing to spend it on, nowhere to spend it. Certainly not Cybertron. And what could he buy that he couldn’t just _take_ now that he is what he was always meant to be? What could a warlord possibly want for?

The tip of a claw dips into the port groove. He never spent it. He’d meant to. Oh, but he had meant to.

Megatronus had brought forth the currency chip to show, and Orion— Megatron remembers with a startling clarity, how the archivist had covered his mouth with his servos, optics alight with a blaze of pride. _Is that it,_ he’d asked with such an air of wonder. Megatronus has laughed at him — _it is but a fraction of what you earn,_ he’d teased, half-joking, half-serious — but Orion brushed away that excuse immediately. _But it’s **yours** ,_ he’d reasoned. _I can’t presume to know of your experience, your suffering, but this…_ Servos, small careful servos, closing around his own, and just— _holding_.

 _This is yours, my gladiator,_ Orion Pax had whispered into his knuckles, soft as a kiss. _It is something special, something precious. That is reason enough._

Megatron scowls. Why, of all the memories to keep, has his processor chosen to archive this with such care? With such attention to detail?

He almost tenses his servo before he can stop himself, nearly crushing that chip in a careless show of anger. He isn’t sure why he stops himself. Megatron does not care to delve into his emotional subroutine and discover the reason.

The rest of the night is not quite so well-preserved in his memory. He knows Megatronus had surged forward at Orion’s words, held the small frame so close to his own he could feel the thrum of the other’s spark through the armour. He’d captured Orion’s mouth in a deep kiss, an act so familiar it aches against Megatron’s own lips. He had pressed the other against the entrance door to his hab-suite, and in a voice dark and laced with static, had demanded of the mech, _Resist me no longer._

Megatron’s other servo clenches into a fist.

 _When have I ever?_ Orion whispered back. His voice was a tease as his fingers, those careful little fingers, dipped into the gaps between Megatronus’ abdominal armour to stroke the vulnerable protoform hidden beneath.

Will Megatron ever hear that again? The familiar deep resonation alight in humour, alight in laughter and fondness?

But then, in the same vent, he remembers everything else, as well. The salute of the officer as she allowed him to walk Kaon’s surface. Soundwave’s stilted response when Megatronus mentioned it to him, and that sudden realisation that _of course Soundwave understood Cybertronian security better than any mech._

They all came from somewhere, the gladiators of the Pits of Kaon.

The mech Megatron had once been wanted to save this tiny currency chip. He’d thought that perhaps if he tried hard enough, he could buy himself and his little archivist a home. It would have taken vorns to save up enough, had he stayed with that governmental job. But that farce had only gone on a few lunar cycles before he’d resigned, disgusted with the system’s determination to drive itself into the dirt and all of Cybertron with it.

Orion should have understood. Orion _would_ have.

 _What have you done!?_ he’d called after him, voice furious and heartbroken.

Megatron wonders, sometimes. When space is cold enough, and dark enough, and his frame has gone too long without the heat of a good battle. He wonders, was it all bound to happen in this way? Was it all so unavoidable? Was this — this moment, right now — an inescapable truth, after all?

He stares at the stupid little chip. By all accounts, he should discard it. Throw it away and never think on it again. For how could it ever have come to pass, that something so innocuous, so small and for all intents and purposes _useless_ might have led to such an impossible thing as a life for him and... and the _Prime_ … It does not seem possible at all.

So why, with all these millennia past, has he kept hold of it?

A message from Soundwave interrupts Megatron’s thoughts. `_Energon source: detected._`

Megatron’s optics cycle before he feels his expression fall back into the cold detached face he likes to wear, claws closing over the chip as he returns it to his subspace. The interruption could not have been more welcome.

` _Details?_` he comms back.

The rate of typing increases before Soundwave replies, `_Planet designation: Earth. Residents: organic, sentient._` A pause in the message. ` _Threat posed: negligible_. `

It makes Megatron snort aloud. He turns to face Soundwave, who answers the look with a blank one of his own. “Set course, then,” he orders. “Set course for this Earth. We have much work to do.” `_And keep an optic out. I want to be notified at the slightest sign._ `

Soundwave responds with an `_affirmative._` There is no need for clarification; he knows who his leader is thinking about.

The blasted chip sits heavily in Megatron's subspace, but he terminates any further thoughts on it, and turns away from the transparasteel. His claws dig into the metal of his palm, and the pain grounds him. _I have only ever done what I had to,_ he reminds himself severely, _and it does not do to dwell on the inevitable_.

"I shall inform the rest," he tells Soundwave, making for the door. On a whim, he stops by the desk, and places a servo on his friend's shoulder. "Keep working," he says. _Good job,_ he doesn't say, but he doesn't need to.

Soundwave nods.

Megatron does it without thinking — he pulls the chip from his subspace, and holds it out. His voice comes out deceptively cool. "And dispose of this. Discreetly."

Soundwave's blank visor lowers to the chip. He picks it up and it disappears from Megatron's view. The weight of it still doesn't seem to leave his palm. But Soundwave nods again, and that will have to be enough.

Megatron walks away from the Nemesis flight deck, and does not look back. There is much work to be done.

**Author's Note:**

> mg: i have done nothing wrong ever in my life  
> sw: i know this and i love you


End file.
